Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) Read online

  “Is that it?” Alvarez said, shooting Jack an I don’t believe this shit look. “You don’t have any more details on this mission?”

  “Well, if you want to get technical,” the pilot replied, “my orders are to fly you to Damlacik, where Major Dawson, as in Major Dawson personally, will receive further instructions over the radio on frequency 149.800 megahertz, and that I’m supposed to do whatever the hell you tell me to do. I think the military-speak was that you have full operational discretion. I’m fine with anything you order me to do except giving up cartoons on Saturday. That’s it. Sounds fun, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Jack grated. “A goddamn barrel of monkeys.”

  “This is very strange, Jack,” Terje said. “How can we do…whatever we are supposed to do if we have no idea what it is?”

  “It’s one of the joys of ‘need to know’ taken to an extreme,” Jack told him. “I guess we just have to hope that whoever is on the other end of the radio when we get to Damlacik has a clue.”

  Alvarez looked disgusted. Stoltenberg gave a Cheshire Cat smile in the darkened compartment and shook his head. Terje sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes.

  An hour and a half later, the pilot announced, “We’re going feet wet over Lake Van, boys and girls, about forty minutes out from the target. We’re going to be making a low approach to keep the Iranians from painting us on their radar and getting their panties in a bunch. The ride’s going to be a bit rough once we go feet dry on the far side of the lake, so get your barf bags ready.”

  “If we were on a Norwegian plane,” Stoltenberg told him, “we’d have in-flight service and free drinks. Don’t you have any whiskey?”

  “Yeah,” the pilot told him, “but that’s only for the pilots. Passengers have to fend for themselves.”

  The pilot and Stoltenberg shared a laugh as the CV-22 pitched over and dove toward the black water of Lake Van, leveling out less than a hundred feet above the water.

  Jack shifted in his seat, unable to get comfortable. He checked his weapon for the fifth time, making sure a round was chambered and the safety was on, before switching on his night vision goggles, then turning them off again.

  Stoltenberg leaned across the aisle and put a hand on Jack’s wrist. “Stop fidgeting.” He grinned. “Lurva’s trying to sleep.”

  “Sleep time’s over,” the crew chief said. “It’s time for you guys to gear up.”

  The men began to check their weapons and gear again. They’d already checked once, early in the flight. But it never hurt to check again.

  With that done, there was nothing left to do but wait as the plane droned onward.

  “Feet dry,” the pilot called as they reached the far side of the lake. The CV-22 nosed up slightly, then leveled off again. “Twenty minutes to target.”

  Jack’s eyes widened as he saw through one of the portholes in the side of the plane the lights of houses passing by below. The tips of the rotors barely cleared the rooftops.

  Then the houses along the beach flashed by and the plane was flying over darkened countryside. The pilot adjusted their course left and right to avoid the towns in their flight path.

  “Hang on, it’s going to get a little bumpy,” he warned.

  The Osprey began to climb and dive as they left the flat plains east of Lake Van and entered the hills before Lake Erçek. The plane roared over the northern end of that lake before heading into the mountainous terrain closer to the Iranian border.

  Jack’s headache, which had receded somewhat, returned with a vengeance.

  The only member of the team who spoke out against the roller coaster ride was Lurva, whose cries let everyone in the compartment know of her displeasure. Stoltenberg offered her some sardines, which the cat sniffed at before gingerly plucking from the Norwegian’s hand.

  “I still can’t believe we’re taking a cat into a fight,” Alvarez said, shaking his head. “And she’s so calm. I’d have expected her to be clawing your face off.”

  “This is nothing,” Stoltenberg said, fluffing the hair on Lurva’s head before gently pushing her back down into the carrier, which had straps so he could carry her on his back. “I’ve taken her on jumps before.”

  Alvarez threw back his head and laughed. “I call bullshit on that one, my friend.”

  “No, really! She doesn’t like it much, but she’ll do anything for a few sardines. She’s been on the firing range with me, too.”

  “How’d she like that?” Jack asked.

  Stoltenberg chuckled. “Only my girlfriend sees those scars.”

  Turning to Alvarez, Jack said, “Be glad as hell we have a cat with us. You guys know they’re natural harvester detectors, right?”

  “We’d heard that, but everybody thought it was crap.”

  “It’s true. They go nuts when there’s a harvester anywhere nearby. Do yourself a favor and get a couple. Keep them with you at all times.”

  Alvarez raised his eyebrows. “Well, the quartermaster had better start issuing ‘em.”

  “Five minutes.” The pilot’s voice had lost its cheery veneer. The Osprey dove, then made a tight turn to the left before it leveled off again.

  “So are we supposed to get these mystery instructions as soon as we arrive at the target?” Jack asked the pilot.

  “Beats the shit out of me, sir. I’ve told you all I know.”

  Jack and Alvarez shared a mutual what a clusterfuck look.

  “Okay, pick an open spot near the town to land. Alvarez, your team will provide security while we’re on the ground.” He looked at Terje. “You guys hang out with me in here. If we don’t hear anything over the radio in five minutes, we’ll shut down the plane and wait.”

  A few moments later, the Osprey nosed down, then leveled off one last time. As the loadmaster opened the rear ramp, the pilot called, “One minute!”

  The men unstrapped and got ready. Jack’s fingers tingled as he gripped the M4, and he forced himself to control his breathing.

  The Osprey rapidly slowed, its massive wingtip rotors tilting from their horizontal flight mode to vertical hover mode as the pilot brought it in for a gentle landing in the middle of a grain field. The sight of the stalks whipping in the downwash of the Osprey’s rotors gave Jack chills as he looked out the open ramp of the aircraft with his night vision goggles.

  Even before the main gear kissed the ground, Alvarez and his men leaped from the rear ramp and ran to take up defensive positions around the Osprey. The four Norwegians knelt at the ramp entrance, the muzzles of their rifles covering the rear arc of the plane to augment the M240 machine gun manned by the crew chief.

  Jack unplugged his headset and moved forward to the cockpit, where he plugged back in. “Anything?”

  “Not yet.” The pilot and copilot kept their eyes outside the cockpit, scanning the fields around them, and their hands on the controls.

  The only lights were shining from the northeast, about half a mile away, where the little town of Damlacik lay. Checking his watch, Jack marked the time. Five minutes, he thought. Call us, whoever you are. Call soon.

  Time crept by with agonizing slowness. One minute. Two. Three. At the five minute mark, Jack said to the pilot, “Maybe we should call on that freq to let them know we’re here.”

  “Your discretion, sir,” the pilot said. “The orders said to await contact.”

  “Right.” Jack blew out a breath. “Go ahead and shut…”

  The radio came to life. “This call is for Jack Dawson.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Jack felt a tingle run up his spine. The signal was loud and clear, and there was no mistaking the speaker’s voice. He keyed the mic. “Vijay? Is that you?”

  “It was good of you to come, Jack,” Vijay said. “I apologize for all the cloak and dagger, as you might say, but it is necessary. You’ll soon understand why.”

  “But how…”

  “Everything will be made clear soon, I promise you. But first I must ask you to continue your journey just a bit farther. This sto
p was just a sanity check, shall we say, to make sure our instructions had been followed. Can you copy down these coordinates?”

  The pilot, who was listening in, nodded, holding a pen poised over a notepad. “Roger,” Jack said. “Go ahead.”

  Vijay read off a set of coordinates, then had Jack read them back for confirmation.

  “Very good,” Vijay said. “Get there as quickly as you can, and I will contact you again on this same frequency.”

  “Vijay?” Jack waited for the scientist, whom he’d last seen near death in a Hyderabad hospital, to reply. “Vijay!”

  There was no answer.

  After mouthing a venomous curse, he ordered the crew chief to recall the men outside. To the pilot, he said, “As soon as the others are aboard, let’s get rolling.”

  “Not so fast, sir. Our mission parameters only specified Turkey.”

  Jack looked at him, puzzled. “So? What’s the problem?”

  “These coordinates, sir.” The pilot pointed to the map display on the instrument panel. “See that icon there? That’s our destination.”

  Jack looked at the symbols on the display. While he could read military unit symbols well enough, a modern combat aircraft’s navigation system was something else. “Look, I’m just a dumb grunt. Spell it out for me, okay?”

  The pilot stared at him. “This party pad that your buddy wants us to fly to? It’s over the border, inside Iran.”

  MESSENGER

  “Major, are you sure about this?” Alvarez said quietly, with a sideways glance at his men, who were again strapped into their seats in the passenger compartment. “The world’s going to hell, sure, but crossing into Iran is a door to a whole new level of hell that I’m not sure we want to open without a green light from up-chain. We’ve got no backup if things go south on us.”

  “We’ve already got authorization from as high as you can get,” Jack told him. “I’m pretty sure I know who authorized this op, and he sits in the Oval Office of the White House. That’s why I was given full operational discretion.” Leaning closer to the special forces officer, Jack went on, “Listen, the guy I spoke to on the radio knows a great deal about harvesters. His plane went down a couple days ago, and it’s pretty obvious now that our mission is to retrieve him.”

  “But why all the dancing around?” Stoltenberg asked. “If we were supposed to just extract him, our orders should have been to do just that. Boom! In we go to get him and it’s done. But coming here, then going somewhere else to await yet more instructions, being kept in the dark all the while, makes no sense to me.”

  “I agree and I don’t like this setup, either,” Jack said. “But the order stands. We’re going.” To the pilot, he said, “Notify headquarters over satcom that we’re heading across the border, then crank it up and let’s get moving.”

  “Three bags full, sir,” the pilot said as he pushed the throttles forward and the big rotors lifted the Osprey into the air. Turning to the southeast, the plane picked up speed. “Four miles to the border. Here’s hoping everyone’s asleep.”

  “Threat board is clear,” the copilot said.

  Jack’s gut tightened into a knot as the Osprey approached the border. Everyone was silent except for the pilot and copilot, who periodically exchanged clipped phrases about the approach.

  “I’m planning to cross on a northeasterly heading, away from the target,” the pilot said. “Then we’ll tack back to the southeast. That might throw them off a little.” He paused. “Okay, here we go.”

  The Osprey nosed up, and Jack caught a glimpse of some distant lights along a cleared track that ran along the ridge line before the scene returned to darkness as the Osprey zoomed down the other side.

  “Welcome to the Republic of Iran,” the pilot announced. “Passports, please.”

  “We’re not going to have much time before they scramble fighters if their radar paints us, major,” Alvarez said.

  “I realize that, captain.” To the pilot, he said, “What’s our ETA?”

  “Nine minutes. And you guys better hold on to your breakfast again. We’re heading into some really mountainous shit. It looks like the target site is just off of a big cut through the mountains. I’m going to take that route to mask us from radar as best I can.”

  “Do it.” Jack leaned back and cinched his safety belt tighter.

  The ride wasn’t too bad until they were within four miles of the target, when the pilot yanked the Osprey’s nose into the air over a hill, then flew in a series of gut-wrenching turns over a narrow stream bed flanked by steep hillsides. One of the men in the back vomited, and the reek of it made Jack want to follow suit.

  “One minute,” the pilot called.

  The loadmaster opened the ramp in the rear, which let in a welcome gust of clean, cool air as the plane began to slow. The sound of the engines changed as the nacelles at the end of the wings pivoted upward. They climbed out of the rocky ravine they’d been following until they reached a spot that, while not completely level, was enough so that the pilot was able to set down.

  “Welcome to the ass end of nowhere,” the pilot said.

  Once again, the soldiers, led by Alvarez, rushed down the ramp and set up a defensive perimeter around the Osprey as Jack waited for Vijay to call.

  “All clear,” Alvarez reported over his radio. “There’s nobody here.”

  “Welcome, Jack,” Vijay’s voice came over the radio. “I’m glad you’ve come.”

  “Vijay, where the hell are you?” Jack had his night vision goggles on and was looking out the windscreen, trying to catch sight of his friend. “We’ve got to get you aboard and get out of here. Is Kiran with you?”

  “Kiran is with me, yes, but not where we asked you to land. You must come down the hill to the stream bed, Jack. Then follow it to your right, heading southeast, for about three kilometers. Come on foot. We’re waiting for you there.”

  “We don’t have time for a cross-country march,” Jack snapped. “We’re flying over to pick you up.”

  “If you do, Jack, you will be shot down. You must come on foot. I am sorry, but it is for our protection.”

  “Your protection? I don’t understand. We…”

  “Time is running out, Jack,” Vijay warned him. “If you are not here in thirty minutes, we will be gone. The choice is yours. Goodbye, my friend.”

  “Dammit!” Jack slammed the bulkhead with his fist.

  The pilot turned to look at him. “Sir, you’re not thinking of just leaving us sit here for an hour while you waltz down there and get this whacko, are you?”

  “We don’t have any choice. Shut down and pretend you’re a rock with rotors until we get back.” Jack tore off the headset and flung it into a seat. Grabbing his weapon, he joined Halvorsen, Stoltenberg and the other two Norwegians who were guarding the bottom of the ramp. “Come on,” he shouted as the pilot killed the engines and the vortex of dust and debris flying around the plane began to dissipate. “Alvarez! Leave a security detail here to guard the plane. You and the rest come with me.”

  He didn’t give the captain any time to argue before setting off at a trot down the hill toward the stream bed half a mile away, with the Norwegians close on his heels.

  ***

  Sergeant First Class Ron Klimowicz thought the entire mission was insane from the get-go, but that’s what he thought about nearly all the missions he’d been sent on in the eight years he’d been in Special Forces. He’d seen action in Iraq, Afghanistan, and half a dozen other places in the world. He’d been in danger plenty of times, and in many forms. He’d had a helicopter shot out from under him. He’d been in firefights and survived hand to hand combat. Hidden, he’d lain silent while the enemy walked past him, so close that he could have reached out and driven a knife through their ribs had that been his mission.

  Klimowicz was well accustomed to that sort of danger, but what the harvesters presented was something altogether different. On the last mission, helping out the Marines in Budapest, he’d finally
seen first hand the creatures shown on the news and the web. His team had gone in to get several embassy personnel who’d been cut off a few blocks away from the embassy, and it was there that Klimowicz had glimpsed the dark, alien forms as they savaged the Hungarian security forces that were trying to protect the panicked civilians mobbing the embassy. The civilians pleaded and cursed in the vain hope that they would be taken away by the Marine Ospreys that came in over the maintenance walkway along the peak of the roof where they picked up the embassy workers gathered there. He’d replayed that scene over and over in his mind on the flight back to Ramstein, wondering if such horrors could really be true.

  Bringing up the rear as the team made its way along the stream bed, he caught a whiff of a foul odor that made his hackles rise at the same time the cat carried by the crazy Norwegian officer who was halfway up the patrol’s column let out a low growl.

  Turning around again, as he did every few steps to keep watch behind the team, he caught sight of someone…or something…moving. It was no more than a flicker in the vivid green of the night vision goggles that could easily have been dismissed as an illusion, but Klimowicz had been doing this sort of thing too long. A surge of adrenaline heightened his senses as he tightened his grip on his weapon, his electronically aided eye sighting down the scope at the culvert where he’d seen the movement. “Contact at our six,” he whispered into his microphone as he knelt down behind a rock.

  “What do you have?” It was the major’s voice, a whisper in his ear piece.

  “I don’t know, sir. I just caught a glimpse of something…” He paused as a hair-covered face with a set of long ears peered out from the culvert. “Scratch that. It’s a damn goat.”

  As if in reply, the goat, which was looking right at him, made a low neaghh sound.

  “Yeah, fuck you, too,” he whispered to himself, imagining the big goat roasting on a spit over an open fire.

  “Move out,” Captain Alvarez ordered.

  “Roger.” Klimowicz got back to his feet and resumed the march. The major was pushing fast, trying to get to the rendezvous point, and they were making a lot more noise than Klimowicz would have liked.